Tanbur player Necdet Yaşar is a living master of Turkish Classical music and was recently honored as a Distinguished National Artist. Considered one of the finest instrumentalists in Turkish music in the second half of this century, he is a virtuoso on the tanbur (a long necked string instrument). Born in 1930 in Nizip, a small town near Gaziantep in Turkey, Yaşar began his musical education as a young lad on the baglama, a rural folk instrument.